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Please copy alpha into a separate greyscale buffer (create a new document) if you're going to use it as layer mask. Otherwise, mask won't look correct with RGB alpha. |
The plug-in creates a layered structure (see the image below), with the extra buffers below (they appear disabled as they do not contribute directly to the final result), and the “light buffers” above them (including the emitters and environment layers). A “Background” layer is also created with a “Background Mask” that allows you to replace the background with a new one of your choice.
All the light layers should be set to Linear Dodge (Add) blending mode (MXI bitdepth = 32), and the Background Mask to Multiply blending mode. This way, the whole render will be displayed as the sum of the contribution of all the independent emitters together, giving you precise control over each of them. A render layer, which comes directly from the rendering process, is put on top.
Notes
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- The plug-in is unable to save the changes in the original .mxi or in a new .mxi, for the moment. If the user wants to save any changes, they must save as psd or another layered file format.
- If you would like to emulate the Maxwell Render Multilight feature, you should blend the light layers using the Linear Dodge (Add) blending mode.
- The exposure of each layer can be controlled by applying an adjustment Exposure layer, mimicking the ISO/ Shutter slider. To adjust the color of a layer (mimicking the MultiLight color adjustment), you can apply a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer to the desired layer.
- To avoid the adjustment layer affecting the layers underneath, you should create a Clipping Mask (Alt + Ctrl + G) to ensure the adjustment only affects the desired layer. (See the Maxwell Render Action for Photoshop included in the plug-in package).
- If you would like to use your own background, you can use the Background Mask layer in Multiply blending mode. Just paste your own background into the Background layer.
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- The MXI must have been rendered with the alpha channel enabled to get this Background Mask information.
- Due to the Multishadow feature, regular shadow buffers in old MXIs will be showed incorrectly.
- If you need a shadow buffer of an old MXI you must downgrade the plug-in to the 2.0.3 version.
- The 64 bits version of the Mac OSX plug-in loads the MXIs with bithdepth 32 by default.
- The Motion Vector buffer appears clipped by its own motion vector alpha information, which is different to the global Alpha buffer.